Carol Ford

William Bell’s brilliant “You Don’t Miss Your Water” is undoubtedly one of the seminal southern soul recordings. It was a big hit too and not surprisingly attracted a couple of answer songs. Carol Ford’s Your Well Ran Dry is perhaps the best of them. First of all the way they turned the tempo around with a Latin tinged funky little beat based on Ben E King’s “Stand By Me” is really neat. Secondly Carol’s hard hitting no nonsense vocals are great to listen to, and finally the rap in the middle sets up the song’s climax beautifully. Gene Redd may well be the guy who should get the credit for the arrangement. The uptempo flip is pretty good too thanks to Carol’s gritty approach. Carol’s second and final single contained two Christmas numbers and sadly doesn’t interest me at all.

UPDATE ~ The great sleuth my friend Greg Burgess writes to say that "Carol Ford , later the Rev Carolyn Ford-Griffiths is the Mother of 80s R&B/ Soul singers Penny Ford and Sharon Redd. Their father is Gene Redd, who of course produced the King singles that you feature. She seems to have stayed in Cincinnati founding a church and becoming an important community leaders in one of the poorer parts of the City." You can find a picture of Carol Ford here but I won't feature it on my site due to the presence of another person in it - a man who is certainly not welcome here.